In Limbo
by nin-anna
Summary: Years after leaving his highly classified research job at the Department of Defence, Dr. Akari has become a famous researcher in the cardiac surgery department of a prestigious medical university. Despite his wishes otherwise, his past resurfaces one night pulling him back into Limbo.


(_I like Karneval a lot and I have always wanted to publish a fanfiction about it, especially involving Akari whom I practically worship. However, I must admit, I've felt rather timid and lacking in confidence in portraying Karneval characters. Decided that I can always erase if I don't like the end product or if it God forbid makes any injustice to this beloved series and its delightful characters. So do tell me if I've committed the sin of OOC, it is particularly important for me here. Here is a first attempt, any criticism is more than welcome.)_

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Undying habits, legacy of dangerous days long gone by, he still ensured that he would get an early notice in case somebody had intruded his home and here he was standing in front of his perfectly locked door that showed no signs of breaking in for any untrained eyes but his eyes were surely not untrained. He sighed. Silently. In fact so silently that even if he had company right near him and they saw him sigh, they would not believe he had indeed sighed. Silent movements, from breathing in silence to stepping in silence, were the first things he learnt how to accomplish in the dangerous days long gone by. Now his body was so accustomed to the fruits of the training he had received in his youth that in the smallest hint of danger, it would smoothly transition to a stealth mode like a weapon.

Truthfully though he was nothing like a weapon. He had never been a weapon. He had never wanted to be a weapon.

He sighed again. Silently. Considering his options again and again did not take much time as he was keenly aware of how few options he had. His hand motioned to the inner pocket of his blazer, gripping the silver pen he cherished not even one bit because of the beauty of the finely crafted accessory but for the amazing usefulness it had shown over the years. He was going to need to buy another pen. If he lived that is.

He would probably live, he assumed. Sure, a long time had passed since he last had to resort to violence but he did train his body regularly and even if his techniques were a little rusty, he still would have the upper hand against any ordinary criminal. The problem was if his intruder was not an ordinary criminal and then well, tough luck, his day had started so fine too but what could he do? Every creature was bound to taste death and he had prepared himself for death years ago when he first mingled in with those who were... not ordinary. And also criminals. At least in his opinion, now.

Another silent sigh and his mind had already assayed the damage both his bag - now gripped at a well calculated angle to inflict the maximum harm it could - and the silver pen in his hand could deliver. He closed his eyes for less than a second and something inside him wailed that he was just too old and too busy as a researcher for these sorts of things any more...

Too old?

Not by any regular standards in the very least, as his body moved in one swift motion, opening the door, attacking inside like a frontline soldier on an incursion. In split of a second he was standing right above the intruder who seemed to be so contentedly sprawled on the large sofa in his living room. Before his pen could even come close to the stranger's throat though, it stopped.

He stopped it.

He stopped. 

He could not see the face of his intruder but he did not have to see his face to recognise the man.

Oh, how would it be possible to not recognise him anyway?

He sighed, this time not silently as his body transitioned slowly to its everyday reflexes, much less agile and much more controlled. He moved to place his pen in his inner pocket again as his intruder spoke, in a voice that was a little hoarse yet somehow still managed to be so delightful, leaving a velvety sensation around the ears of any listener... Doctor Akari wanted to disregard the feeling but it was a lost cause.

"Welcome home..." 

Oh how he would have loved to hear these same words pronounced by this exact voice, by this very person... years ago. Sure, he would not admit it even then but it would have instilled the kind of warmth you only felt when you are wrapped inside the arms of your mother as a child. It was that sweet to him. That tender. That kind.

Yet somehow hearing them now only upset his stomach, he felt a very specific kind of irritation boil in his heart slowly and steadily and he precisely knew what it was. It was disappointment. A disappointment so big, so huge that it felt to push the boundaries of his soul, of his body... He felt as though he would break. He felt as though he would truly break: his skin tearing apart and giving birth to a painful reality of pure and enormous disappointment. He swallowed.

"Get out."

"Oh now, Akari-san, that is really not the polite way to address a guest, is it?"

"Surely, and surely you are not a guest, but only a scoundrel who breaks into people's houses in the middle of the night."

"I have actually been here since early evening, it is you who have come rather late, another long day at work I presume? Always the hard worker. I will have to admit that my way of entering your house may have been inappropriate but a poor soul seeking shelter in your dwelling does not deserve to be called a scoundrel, I'd like to think..."

Speaking longer now had made it apparent. The very slight slurping at the end of one or two words. That tiny hesitation between one or two vowels. The shifting of the chest in front of him proving that the man was spending more energy than he should for simply speaking.

"You are injured."

"Hah... always the most observant."

Akari sighed. Almost loudly this time. He had no time for this. He had no reason to do this. He had every reason not to do this, actually. Yet it was inevitable when he said, in perfect defeat,

"Undress."

"Oh dear, I did not think you would be so forthcoming... it is rather embarrassing actually."

"Stop your unnecessary and certainly ineffectual teasing and undress."

The lips of the man in front of him curved up even more and his hands moved towards his lap, removing the jacket that was sitting on his lap revealed a significantly large stain of blood on his dirty, crumpled white shirt. Close to his hip, over his lower abdomen.

Akari held his breath at the sight, very unconsciously.

His fingers moved to unbutton his shirt, very self consciously.

How many times had Akari seen this man undress in front of him? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? The graceful fingers skilfully hovering over the buttons or zippers or belts and somehow, like a magician commanding them to they would simply be undone... It was always so smooth and thus alluring that one could assume this person's greatest talent in the world was simply undressing. They would be completely and thoroughly mistaken.

Gone were the skilful hands now though. It was almost painful for Akari to watch as the man handled each button like a child who had only recently learnt how to dress and undress himself. It took an effort, that much was self-evident. And he could help but offering assistance now would only hurt the other man and sure, deep inside of him, hell not that deep rather much on the surface too, he wanted to hurt the other man... so much... but not now. Not like this.

How did he know? He knew for this was not the first time he saw him undress like this, either... How many times had Akari seen this man undress like this, in front of him? Twice? Three times? Four? Four it was. He remembered Budapest then, the last time he had treated an injured Hirato, the last time they were happy, the last time they were content, the last time they were... truly and not just literally but also very much figuratively "together". He had undressed like this in Budapest too. His hands were as clumsy. Was his injury as bad? Akari desperately hoped not. Sure, he wanted to hurt this man... so much... but not like this. Never like this.

"You are so focused, is my body that enticing?"

Enticing? How many times had he looked at the bare chest in front of him and thought that? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? It had always been enticing. The porcelain skin almost carefully adorned with scars of any and all kinds, they did not look ugly at all, on the contrary like an intricate lacework, very pretty. The chiselled body that was almost perfect and the tiny bits of imperfection made it all the more human and all the more enticing than anything. He would lose his breath and his cognitive faculties would diminish spectacularly, stripping him of the genius he had depended on all his life and instead leaving behind an animal that only depended and acted on instinct... It was terrifying. It was beautiful. It was sad. It was enticing.

It was not what he was feeling now. Not at all.

The beauty he had claimed as his own and adored so many times in the past was laying in front of him, desecrated and injured. They had dirtied his very own temple. The precipitated blood covering the terrible gunshot wound that had thankfully missed vital organs it seemed, various small and large bruises inflicted throughout the upper torso and he could not even imagine what others were present on other parts of his body. He did not want to imagine.

Enticing? Not at all.

A surge of compassion instead had claimed his heart, slowly spreading, seeping through all his inner organs, he could almost feel it as some warm liquid dripping from his rib cage, pouring down into his abdomen in a knowing and soothing movement. His palms itched with mercy and he wanted to touch not out of passion nor out of pity but of pure kindness and absolute gentleness. He could not though. He knew any such caressing would only burn the man in front of him right now. A man who at times was more afraid of tender care and mercy than the worst kinds of torture, or even death... So, Akari spoke, his lips in a straight line fighting the urge of a frown bravely and his voice calculatedly cold and carefully cleansed of any compassionate tones it originally would contain,

"You look like shit."

"That is a rather brutish way of putting it..."

"A very accurate one though. Assuming you were telling the truth and did arrive in the evening, it has been hours... Why have you not received proper medical attention? Surely there must be places you could have gone right after the injury."

"Should I deduce that you are unwilling to provide me medical care? I would not mind closing my eyes permanently in your presence Akari-san, for in all honesty I could not think of a better place to end my feeble existence than near you, but I think the eventual stench and the unsightly blood stains would bother you terribly in the future..."

"Why have you not received proper medical attention? I will not repeat my question."

The curved lips of the man in front of him faltered then and for a second the guilt of a child caught red handed ghosted over his beautiful features. It was honest. If there was one thing Akari absolutely could not resist of this man, it was when he was actually honest. For it was so rare. For it was so fragile. For it was so impossible yet it still happened... even if extremely scarcely.

Akari sighed loudly then and leaned forward, examining the wound in front of him carefully. Bleeding seemed to have mostly stopped, thanks to the rough but functional first aid he had received, or rather performed by himself, probably... Akari could see the specific carving and the traces of blood to infer that the man had taken out something, one of the bullets probably, were there more inside? The thought made his insides tremble and the fear of losing the man in front of him gripped... or rather almost gripped for right at the same moment he heard, not in the alluring velvety and vain voice from before but in an almost apologetic silent tone,

"I do not like them touching me... I do not like anybody touching me..."

A profound and knowing sadness shaded his eyes as his brain was already fast processing both the inventory of his medical equipment stored at home and the steps to take for the operation he would have to perform in mere minutes... Then it came, in an even smaller voice...

"But you."

The tiniest smile found its way to his lips then and even Akari, famous for his apathetic facial expression at work could not manage to avoid it, to fight it off. He swallowed the little seed of happiness from the mere words of a person who should have been deep buried in the past and stayed that way. Not only for himself, but for the well-being of the person in front of him now, he had to ignore any and all of the emotional turmoil that was raging under his skin; surely, he could not perform well if his mind was on anything but the job at hand.

"Lie down properly."

He said, before moving away abruptly and pacing into the various rooms of the small apartment he owned, collecting the diverse set of tools he would need for the little operation. He shouted questions as he moved around.

"How many bullets do you have inside?"

"Only one left. I took out the other."

"How much did you bleed?"

"Not enough to knock me out of consciousness. I used the special antihaemorrhagic medication."

"Oh, they finally made it work?"

"Yes, thanks to your previous brilliant research. It helps a lot. The special bandages too."

"Good. I do not have strong anaesthetics at home. I do not think you should be fully anaesthetised anyway, it can be dangerous in your current condition."

"My lover used to say that the only thing good about me was my almost supernaturally high pain tolerance."

Akari did not comment on that response nor the specifically playful tone it was pronounced in. No, instead he silently knelt near the sofa, started setting up his equipment and getting ready; the gloves were worn unceremoniously, bandages separated meticulously, a syringe full of a light anaesthetic applied to the lying man in front of him...

"Oh... that and my skills in the bed. Could you believe that Akari-san? Such a shameless admission, even if utterly and certainly true."

At that Akari decided that perhaps he did not have to apply the antiseptic in his hand so gently and the burning as well as the pain it must have caused did earn him a wincing on the beautiful face that was following every move of his fingers.

"No need to be mean."

"I am not being mean. If anything, I am being more cordial and generous than I should be. Not that I enjoy it."

A necessary yet awfully painful move of the cold metal inside the wound, a stuttered moan... Not that it took any of the man's enthusiasm for chatter,

"Perhaps true but not surprising, I must admit. You have always been the forgiving, saintly kind..."

"I am neither forgiving nor saintly."

"Why are you helping me then?"

"As you also mentioned earlier, I rather abhor the stench of corpses and if you did bleed to death here I cannot imagine how bothersome the large blood stains you would leave behind would be..."

At that his patient giggled. A giggle. How long had it been since the last time Akari heard this man giggle? How many years? Where had it happened the last time? It surely was not Budapest. And definitely not afterwards. Though his mind rather reluctantly received and fondled the stream of memories, caused by every little gesture of the man he was operating on, the faculties of his brain globally famous for their prowess continued steadily commanding his fingers and eyes. As he dug deep inside the man, as the crimson blood of the person – whose blood he both the most and the least wanted to see – painted his fingers intimately and warmly, he felt a chill on his back as well as a heat forming in his stomach. It was always like this whenever he worked on this man. It never changed. All the years that passed had done nothing to change it.

He was scared. He was scared so much that the chills tingled throughout his spine in perfect synch with the moans and stunted breathing of his patient, ghosts of all the patients he could not save in the past whispering into his ears about the horrifying possibility of losing this person. This person. This person he cared more than anyone else, more than anything else in the world. Losing this person in his own hands. It would be an unforgivable sin for his hands and mind and he was not sure if he could ever forgive them for committing such a grave sin.

Yet the warmth of the body in front of him always fascinated him so much. The very act of working on this body, hell, working "in" this body was an intimate act for him. The laboured breaths he heard, the moans and whimpers... it was only him who heard them; no other person on this earth had ever heard them, nor could hear them, oh no, no they would not for Hirato would either kill himself or kill the person before making them hear him so... so exposed, so vulnerable, so alive like a newborn. Nobody was allowed to witness a vulnerable Hirato, but Akari.

Nobody was allowed to touch him, but Akari.

A few more minutes of digging deep into the flesh, persevering through the fears and resisting the wicked intimacy, moans and almost voiceless whimpers echoing unbelievably and irrationally loudly in his ears, in his mind... And it was out.

His eyes wandered to the little piece of cruel metal he extracted from the flesh of his most beloved and hated being in whole existence, while his hands continued, unperturbed, to their mission of cleansing and closing the wound. Pure fury poured from his eyes towards the metal, if his gaze truly had the temperature it seemed to possess the squashed bullet would have been molten by now for sure.

How dare?

How dare the puny piece of metal pierce Hirato's body? How dare this adulterous bullet embed itself inside of the flesh which Akari both adored and craved more than anything? Not that he would admit to any of these. Not that he would admit his very apparent hate towards an inanimate object.

An almost shaky hand cupped his cheek then, breathing erratic and each syllable pronounced as they were being spoken by the incredibly burdened Atlas,

"I guess you will have to wait longer... for a world without me."

_It is not like that... _Oh how he wanted to say it then and there. How he wanted to talk about his feelings. How long had it been since the last time he had talked about his feelings? How many years? Perhaps he truly needed it. For sure he truly wanted it. But no, he could not and he knew very well that he could not so the words turned into sand in his vocal cords, leaving behind only a painful legacy on his body and psyche and an absolute silence... only betrayed by his gaze that somehow said too much, too much to the point that the sarcastic little smile on the face of his patient shattered and in honest sadness that claimed both his face and voice, and most importantly his luscious violet eyes, he said,

"I am sorry."

It was not that saying sorry now would change anything. Three words would not rewind the time and take them back to that period when they worked together, lived together, made love together, fought together... when Akari researched in the hopes of sustaining life and Hirato killed in the hopes of sustaining life. They would not, they could not change the disillusionment Akari faced, the harsh reality of one's work leading only to death and more death when one's only aim was to preserve life and more life... Bureaucracy and politics, intelligence agencies and defence contractors, big flashy lies of morality and ethics and patriotism only to hide greed and injustice and death... Akari could not go back. Hirato, on the other hand, did not have anywhere else to go back. They were doomed to this... this limbo. For neither could survive on the side of the other.

Akari's hand lingered around the wound he had just worked on, his fingertips dancing on the soft skin that smelled unbearably like antiseptic. A small smile found its way to his lips then, realising that there was no resolution to this... this thing they had, he resigned himself to that reality. He resigned himself to limbo. Submission brought a sense of peace with it, always. Even submission to tragedy. No wonder some languages used the same word for both the concepts.

"I am not sorry."

It was a definite statement, not a careless remark or an attempt of console; it was a well thought statement. Violet irises glinted then, lips pale from the blood loss smiled slightly but genuinely, hands moved down to the warm and bare neck of the doctor, a cold thumb caressing the porcelain surface above the carotid artery... Akari's eyes simply gazed into the eyes of the predator in front of him, his heart beat increased dramatically and certainly his predator was welcoming this fact with joy and a tinge of passion and perhaps, even he himself was joyed at the excitement...

"How is it that the bullets cannot undo me but you can? With just four words too..."

"If you are trying to indicate how complex a being you are that you are hurt not by brute force but arguments of intellect, don't spare any of your already laboured breathing, I'd say. You are too simple. Have always been."

Akari's fingers slid to the bare side of the man in front of him and the graceful fingers' warmth tingled the soft skin, Hirato smiled, Akari did too, if a little, well aware of the passion he could induce with the simplest of gestures. Knowing another's body so very intimately always helped in these kind of situations.

"Oh my dear Akari-san, please do not provoke me, I am afraid that you would quite literally be the death of me, given my condition..."

Akari's fingers playfully stabbed the skin they were dancing on just a second ago, his nails scraping the pale canvas, as his body slowly moved up ready to get up and change his clothes at least,

"I will probably be the death of you eventually, if you are so naively keen to cross paths with me like this..."

He mumbled... then his contact with the tender skin of his patient was broken, his hand less than an inch apart for a second, only to be immediately grabbed strongly in the next.

"Don't go."

How could such a shaky hand of such a badly injured patient be so strong? Perhaps it was due to the magnitude of the need that propelled the hand in the first place. Not that Akari could not free his wrist from Hirato's grip. But he did not want to. Even the slightest chance of getting out of this grip had already been lost the second Hirato had uttered, surely without thinking, those two words. _Undoing one with words, huh..._ As if Akari could ever surpass Hirato in that context. Not that Akari would ever admit his defeat, even if he knew it so well.

So he stayed.

He sat there and they did not talk. Instead they held hands, like a pair of children experiencing their first love and completely clueless about what love meant or what lovers ought to be like. They sat there. When Hirato's eyes slowly drifted into the sleep, silently and almost covertly, Akari felt his heart ripped in an instant as a fear of abandonment struck him but he did not, could not bear to move either so he motioned ever so slightly within a silence and calm even he thought he never possessed. Hearing with his own ears the heartbeats of his patient, feeling the warm if erratic breathing between his lips, Akari's heart settled in its rightful place again, worries smothered enthusiastically.

So he stayed.

Akari waited near the sleeping beauty, delicately shaped yet strong hand in his own, his face smoothly lying next to the shoulder that he had leaned to, nibbled on, caressed _oh so many times_ before... A few hours went by with him watching the pristine features that he knew so well, that he tasted so well, so many times too, yet somehow craved endlessly, with a starving hunger even now... The smell of antiseptic and blood, a mixture of death and life, wrapped around them like a cocoon and despite his deepest wishes, despite his keenest determination soon even Akari's eyes fell victim to the cruel embrace of the sleep.

When he woke up, he found himself alone. Yet somehow he could feel a burning sensation on his forehead, on his lips, on his chin, on his neck; he was surely kissed. He knew even if there was no evidence to suggest it, he knew it. It was about knowing a person, knowing how they would act, knowing their behaviour patterns better than you knew yourself.

A few seconds of diving into thoughts and memories and then he decided that it was time to wake up. Literally and figuratively. He got up slowly, cursing the aches that had invaded every one of his limbs. When he sat on the sofa, he realised how the smell of the previous night's affair only lingered lightly and this was how he realised that windows of his living room were cracked open, the fresh air of Spring blowing inside happily and tenderly...

He closed his eyes.

A few seconds of diving into thoughts and memories and then he decided, again, that it was time to wake up. Getting up he found his way to the bathroom, washing up.

He left for work soon, without ever entering the kitchen that morning, if he had entered then he would have found the note Hirato left for him on the refrigerator, earlier and not in the middle of the night like he actually did, after coming back from another long day at work. Perhaps the words would not have stung him that painfully then. Perhaps the words would not have unleashed a nostalgia so great that it kept him sleepless at night then. Perhaps.

"I am not sorry either."


End file.
